Harriet Miers

[billroper]

Harriet Miers decided to ask President Bush to withdraw her nomination to the Supreme Court and he's done so. This is probably a good thing, although actually having hearings would have been a better thing. I tend to be of the opinion that you should have your facts correctly arranged before the hanging occurs.

All that said, I would have greatly preferred that President Bush nominate someone who was more like John Roberts than someone who appeared to have a limited set of qualifications for the office and who was a close associate of the President. But I tend to believe in a merit-based system myself.

It does, at least to some extent, demonstrate that Bush was foolish to take the advice of the Senate Minority Leader, Harry Reid, when he recommended that Bush nominate her. It was remarkable how quickly after the nomination was announced that Reid's office felt compelled to put out a statement indicating that the fact that he'd recommended her didn't mean that he actually supported Miers' nomination.

Well, of course not. Who would have expected that?

Comments

[billroper]

I'm hunting for the statement from Reid's office that I recall having heard, but it's proving elusive. In the meantime, I have a quote from this article:

``I have to say without any qualification that I am very happy that we have someone like her,'' Reid told reporters as Miers stood next to him. Reid stopped short of saying he would support Miers's nomination.

Ah, here we go:

Perkins was referring to Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada, who greeted Miers' nomination kindly Monday, saying he was pleased that Bush had tapped someone outside the community of sitting judges. Yesterday, Reid continued to praise Miers but emphasized that while he had suggested her to the president as a worthy replacement for Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, that does not mean he would vote for her.

"I am grateful that the president took account of my views. But let me make clear that I have not endorsed this nomination," Reid said. "It would be entirely premature of me to do so."

So he recommended her, but wasn't endorsing her, nor would he necessarily vote for her. *whee*

[markbernstein.livejournal.com]

While most of the media links Google turned up had variants of "sources have said that Reid recommended Miers", The Las Vegas Sun, in Reid's home state, had a slightly different take:

'At a White House breakfast meeting Sept. 21, Reid told Bush that Miers and an undisclosed number of others -- a "handful," one aide said -- could be acceptable to Democrats.'

. . .

'When asked why he had "gone to bat" for a Republican nominee, Reid said, "I don't know if this is going to bat." And Reid said that a reporter's characterization of Reid having "recommended" Miers as "maybe exaggerating a little."'

I'd say one of a "handful" that "could be acceptable" is a little different from "I recommend her."

[billroper]

I'd say that, if I were Bush, I wouldn't trust anything that Reid had to say on the subject of possibly acceptable or recommended candidates for judges.

Of course, I wasn't in the White House meeting, so I can't tell you exactly what he might have actually said at the time. But if -- to pick a similar case -- the same thing had happened when Hatch mentioned Ginsburg to Clinton as likely being confirmable, there would have been a lot of Democrats having a cow.